Pennsylvania's Lady Liberty (Harrisburg)

A Lady Liberty replica rises from the middle of the Susquehanna River, and drivers on Route 322 north of Harrisburg can spot her without leaving the road. She stands about 25 feet tall on an abandoned railroad piling in the Dauphin Narrows. The first version was put up on the night of July 1, 1986, to mark the original statue's centennial. According to a 2014 article from the Pennsylvania Center for the Book at Penn State, a dozen men paddled the 450-pound plywood-and-venetian-blind figure out to the old Marysville Bridge piling and hauled it up by rope. Motorists were stopping to look by morning. It was meant to be temporary, but it stood until 1992, when the center's article says a series of storms forced its removal. Its end is told two ways: WJLA says it was blown off its pedestal, and Visit PA says it toppled into the river on a windy night. Plans for a replacement began in 1993 but hit a snag, and the Dauphin borough council took over the project in January 1997. The Center for the Book reports that the new four-ton statue, of metal, wood and fiberglass with a polyester finish, was airlifted onto the piling later that year at an estimated cost of $33,000, with more than 100 people watching. WJLA, in July 2025, called it a beloved landmark that began as a prank. Look for the statue from the highway or the view from Dauphin Indian Head that WJLA mentions; it is in the river and seen from a distance only.